[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, TENN., CALIF., USA
April 16 OHIO: Death penalty still possible for Youngstown triple murder suspect The death remains a possibility in the case of 48-year-old Robert Seman, who is accused of raping a 10-year-old girl then setting a fire to kill her and her grandparents. Judge Maureen Sweeney denied the motion to remove the death penalty on Friday, 2 days after Attorney Thomas Zena filed the request. Seman is charged with the murders of 10-year-old Corinne Gump, 63-year-old William Schmidt and 61-year-old Judith Smith. The bodies of all 3 victims were found inside the Schmidt's burning Powers Way home on March 30, 2015 just hours before Seman was scheduled to go on trial for raping the girl. The indictment charges Seman with 10 counts of aggravated murder, 3 counts of burglary and 3 counts of arson. A pre-trial is scheduled for May 4 in common pleas court. (source: WFMJ news) TENNESSEE: Severe mental illness should rule out death penalty The state of Texas recently executed Adam Ward, a man with a long history of severe mental illness. Tennessee has also pursued the death penalty for individuals like Ward. Occasionally, these individuals are executed. Other times, the cases are litigated for decades, ending in a sentence less than death, but not before putting victims' families through a process that delays legal finality and costs taxpayers millions. Take the Tennessee case of Richard Taylor, convicted in 1981 for joyriding and robbery. While incarcerated, Taylor killed corrections officer Ronald Moore after prison officials stopped giving Taylor his anti-psychotic medication. He was sentenced to death. In 2003, Taylor was granted a new trial but allowed to represent himself, calling no witnesses and introducing no evidence. The jury sentenced Taylor to death again. After his conviction and death sentence were reversed again in 2008, Taylor received a life sentence - 27 years after his 1st capital trial. Though most individuals with severe mental illness are not violent - they are more likely to become crime victims than perpetrators - a lack of access to treatment can lead to delusions, disassociation and sometimes violence. And in Tennessee today, there is simply not enough access to treatment. The result is that law enforcement has become increasingly responsible for these individuals. In a 2014 column in the Tennessean, Davidson County Mental Health Court Judge Daniel Eisenstein wrote: "Mental health treatment has in many cases been shifted from state-run mental health facilities and community programs to courts, jails and prisons." To complicate matters, those with severe mental illness do not always recognize their illness, leading them to fire their counsel and represent themselves, like Taylor; or they may simply refuse to participate in their defense. And what about the risk of wrongful conviction? A 2012 University of Michigan study on wrongful convictions found that roughly 70 % of the defendants who had a mental illness or disability confessed to crimes they did not commit, whereas only 10 percent of defendants without a mental illness made false confessions. Individuals with these illnesses are more susceptible to police pressure and may not understand the charges against them or their Miranda rights. Still, when an individual who has a severe mental illness is guilty of committing a heinous crime, there must be consequences. But is the death penalty appropriate? A coalition of mental health advocates and others called the Tennessee Alliance for the Severe Mental Illness Exclusion believes that individuals with severe mental illness who commit these crimes should be held accountable, but with appropriate sentences - life or life without parole, not the death penalty. And there is precedent. In the United States, we don't execute minors or those with intellectual disabilities. Excluding individuals with severe mental illness from the death penalty on a case-by-case basis (also under consideration in North Carolina and Ohio) is just smart policy as victims' families are spared decades of litigation, costs to taxpayers are reduced, resources can be dedicated to mental health care and support for police, and Tennessee can move toward a criminal justice system that is better for all. (source: Opinion; Hannah Cox is the coordinator for the Tennessee Alliance for the Severe Mental Illness Exclusion. She is a former policy advocate for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and a long-time champion for those with mental illnessKnoxville News Sentinel) CALIFORNIA: Newly found photo could bolster prosecution's case in Berkeley-Oakland death penalty trial A Berkeley man facing multiple murder charges may have inadvertently tipped off the prosecution to a notable piece of evidence by insisting he get access to material on his old cellphone. Police had confiscated the phone of Darnell Williams Jr. at the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----OHIO, TENN., CALIF.
July 30 OHIO: Spirko gets 7th reprieve from executionStrickland grants time for more DNA testing John G. Spirko Jr.Convicted killer John G. Spirko Jr. will get another 120-day reprieve from execution, his 7th, to allow more time for DNA testing. Gov. Ted Strickland signed the reprieve for Spirko today, spokesman Keith Dailey said. Spirko, 60, was scheduled to be executed Sept. 18 for the August 1982 kidnapping and murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, 48, postmistress of Elgin, a small town in northwestern Ohio. His original execution date was Sept. 19, 2005. As with the other 6 delays, this one was granted to allow additional DNA testing on a number of items, including clothing, cigarette butts and duct tape found at the post-office crime scene and the farm field where Mottinger's body was found 6 weeks after her abduction. If any DNA is found, it is tested against samples from Spirko and other individuals. As of March of this year, state officials said the testing, which has cost taxpayers in excess of $50,000, has been inconclusive. (source: Columbus Dispatch) TENNESSEE: Christa Pike back in court appealing death sentence Convicted murderer Christa Gail Pike was in court Monday, appealing the sentence that put her on death row. Monday's is the 1st of 3 days of hearings for Pike, who's asking for a new judge in the case. Criminal court Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz has refused to take herself off the case. Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of a fellow Job Corps student, Colleen Slemmer. In January, a neurologist testified in court that Pike has a damaged brain and suffered sexual and physical abuse in her childhood, as well as abusing drugs. The neurologist said it's like Pike's brakes aren't working because the frontal lobes of her brain aren't put together properly. The final day of the hearings is scheduled for December 10. In 2002, Pike attempted to stop her appeals before changing her mind later. (source: WATE News) CALIFORNIA: Convictions upheld for former Berkeley official The state Supreme Court today upheld the convictions of a former Berkeley city official who was sentenced to death for murdering and decapitating a friend to prevent him from testifying against him in a 1988 beating of a couple. The 6-1 decision said Enrique Zambrano, who had served as a Berkeley waterfront commissioner, had failed to prove that the judge and prosecutor in his trial had committed misconduct and prejudiced the jury. Zambrano was convicted in Alameda County Superior Court of killing Luis Reyna and beating UC Berkeley immunology professor Robert Mishell and his wife, Barbara, whom Zambrano suspected of making harassing telephone calls to his wife about an affair with another woman. Zambrano had told Reyna, who was his friend and fellow Berkeley waterfront commissioner, about the January 1988 beatings. Reyna kept silent at first, but then went to Berkeley police with the story. A jury found that Zambrano made bail and then murdered Reyna in July 1988 to silence him as a witness in the Mishell case, then cut off his head and hands and dumped the body parts in rural Lafayette to give him time to flee to Mexico with his lover, Linda Celebration Oberman. In his appeal, Zambrano claimed that a number of discussions and conferences among the attorneys and Superior Court Judge Stanley Golde went unreported, including conversations during jury selection. Among other things, Zambrano cited problems with jury selection, accused Golde of giving the jury faulty instructions and said the prosecutor, Martin Brown, engaged in misconduct during closing arguments in the penalty phase of the trial. In an opinion released today, the state's highest court, led by Justice Marvin Baxter, rejected Zambrano's arguments but agreed that the prosecutor improperly told jurors that the Bible not only makes it man's duty to impose the death penalty but demands it to preserve the sanctity of human life. We recently have suggested or assumed that prosecutorial arguments substantially similar to the one at issue here are improper, Baxter wrote. Still, he added, Zambrano suffered no prejudice as a result of Brown's remarks. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Joyce Kennard said Zambrano's death sentence should be reversed because the prosecutor's references to the Bible as an authority for the death penalty prejudiced defendant, undermining confidence in the fairness of the penalty phase of defendant's capital trial. Kennard also wrote that she believed Golde erred in refusing defense counsel's request to ask prospective jurors if they would invariably impose the death penalty in a case involving dismemberment of the murder victim's body. Zambrano and Oberman lived as fugitives, 1st in Mexico and then in Palm Springs, until their arrest in September 1989. Oberman pleaded no contest to harboring a criminal and later testified at Zambrano's trial that he admitted murdering Reyna and did not regret it.
